PAST, PRESENT, AND TO COME.
A large portion of the newly-inclosed land belonged to Sir Henry
Withers, whose plantations were celebrated in verse, as we have seen, in
company with Mr. Malton’s fields. Sir Henry had had a world of trouble
in laying his plans about these plantations; for, in addition to the
discontents of the people about the common, he had met with opposition
from other quarters. Every arable cultivator grumbled over Malton’s
pastures and Withers’s woods by turns. Every shepherd looked upon every
spot occupied by a tree as so much food taken from his flock. Sir
Henry’s bailiff himself could not bear to see a rood of ground that was
worth any thing for other purposes devoted to planting, and was
continually offering his advice as to how much should be taken in, and
how large a sweep the fences should make. If his master had followed his
advice, his plantations would not only have made a very extraordinary
zig-zag patchwork, but the expense of fencing round so many odd angles
would have exceeded the saving in good land; to say nothing of the
advantage lost to the trees planted in a poor soil by having none of the
protection of more flourishing neighbours. Sir Henry and his forester
laughed together at the idea of having his plantations look like an
assortment of pincushions, and of rearing a mile of fence where half a
mile would do, for the sake of saving a few acres more for the plough.
These two carried their point against all the little world of Brooke;
and the future woods were appointed to sweep round the foot of this
hill, to retire into yonder hollow, to wave on the top of that healthy
slope, and to shelter from the north winds all this expanse of
corn-fields. It was a delight to the imagination to picture what they
would be a hundred years hence, when hanging woods would ornament a
landscape at present bare and barren.
It was partly this pleasure, and partly the activity of the scene, which
made us love to watch the process of planting. The inclosing was the
first work; and we were for some time in dread that stone walls would be
the kind of fence fixed upon, as the soil was too poor for a quickset
hedge, considering the great extent to which it must have been carried;
and fences of furze and larch would have required too much attention in
the neighbourhood of such large flocks of sheep as Mr. Malton’s. Sir
Henry, however, could not tolerate the idea of stone walls any more than
ourselves, and determined to construct an earthen fence which might last
for nine or ten years, by which time the thinnings of the plantations
might provide a substitute. A ditch was dug, sloping outwards but
presenting a straight cut of a foot and a half next the plantation, on
the verge of which was raised a wall of sods, three or four feet high,
round the top of which ran a single bar of paling.
The next operation was to drain those portions of the soil which
required it—a trouble and expense which, though great at first, becomes
less and less burdensome every year; since, if the drains are properly
kept open and scoured, so that the water may remain pure enough to
nourish the trees, it will be gradually absorbed by them, so as to turn
a swampy into a firm soil. The marking out of the road and paths was
done at the same time with the draining, as one ditch served to drain
the road on one side and the plantation on the other. This part of the
work was the most agreeable of all to lookers-on, and to a man of taste
like Sir Henry, who saw how much of the use and beauty of his woods
depended on this part of his plan. He pointed out with delight how air
would be conducted into the recesses of the groves by these pathways;
and how the road, now barely marked out with the spade, would soon
become a dry green sward, where the fellings of the woods would be
hereafter collected, and where their owner might go to and fro to watch
how his forest nurslings throve.
Our next curiosity was to know what trees Sir Henry meant to plant the
most of. There were to be oaks, of course; but a far greater proportion
of larch. “Larch! Ugly, mean-looking larch!” we exclaimed; and went on
to rail against its appearance when planted in small patches, or on the
ridge of a hill, or sloping away from the wind. But Sir Henry told us
that if we had seen forests of larch we should have had a very different
idea of its beauty. He had been in Switzerland; and he described to us
the sublimity of the woods there, where the mountains are clothed with
larch as high as any vegetation can stretch, and where the tender green
of its young shoots in spring is as beautiful as its sober autumn shade
is grand. To comfort us under our complaints that we were never likely
to look upon Swiss mountains, he told us that we need go no farther than
Scotland to see what a forest of larches might be made. He owned,
however, that he had regarded use more than beauty in his choice of the
larch. This tree grows better on exposed and poor soils than in rich and
sheltered situations;—not so fast, certainly; but its timber is of a
better texture, and it is free from blight. The oak and ash, therefore,
were planted on the best parts of Sir Henry’s grounds; and the rest was
given up to the larch, which was expected to grow more rapidly than all
the trees of the forest besides, to furnish wood as tough and durable as
that of the oak, and moreover to improve the quality of the ground as
rapidly and effectually as could be done by any other process. By the
annual casting of its leaves, the larch enriches the soil beneath as
with a regular supply of manure. The coarse heath gradually disappears,
and the finer grasses spring up, till a larch wood becomes, from being a
barren moor, a pasture land carpeted with white clover: a wonderful
change to take place without any assistance from human labour beyond
that of putting larch plants into the ground. The plantation may be used
as pasture without injury to the young trees, after a ten years’ growth;
and hence arise other advantages,—shade to the flock in summer, warmth
in winter, and shelter from the storm. What wonder that Sir Henry
planted many larches!
Few rural employments are more interesting to the by-stander than that
of planting. I have stood for hours with my brothers, watching the
people at their work. First a labourer took off with his spade about a
foot of turf, and laid it aside, while he dug the pit, and broke the
clods, and loosened the soil near. Then his wife, if he had one, or his
boy, placed the plant, just brought from the nursery, in the earth, and
spread the roots abroad in their natural direction, taking especial care
not to twist or bruise the tender fibres which draw nourishment from the
soil. Then the pit was filled up; the earth being first gently sprinkled
over the roots, and afterwards turned in and trodden down. The turf was
next cut in two with the spade and laid upside down on each side of the
plant, so as to meet round its stem. The purpose of reversing the turf
is that the nursling may not be affected by drought, or injured by the
growth of grass or weeds close beside it. We were sure never to be long
at any one spot without seeing either Sir Henry or his forester, who
were always going their rounds among the labourers. They told us that no
one thing is so much to be dreaded in the work of plantation as
slovenliness in putting the plants into the ground; and as it was
impossible to convince the labourers of all the mischief of bruising or
twisting the roots, there was nothing for it but keeping an eye upon
them continually, to see that they did not make more haste than good
speed. For this reason, planting was not in the present case, as in too
many, done by contract; but even here, where the labourers were paid by
the day, they were apt to grow impatient and think it foolish to
fiddle-faddle about the root-fibres of a tree as carefully as about the
tender organs of an infant. They made many attempts, too, in order to
save trouble, to bring more plants at a time from the nursery than they
could set before night: but the forester having once found half-a-dozen
covered over in a ditch during a frost, made such vehement complaints,
that thenceforward the nurslings were removed as they were wanted and in
security.
I began this winter by admiring Sir Henry’s benevolence to future
generations more than I saw reason to do afterwards. I imagined that he
would reap none of the fruits of his present outlay of trouble and
capital, and that all that he did in planting was for the sake of his
children and his country. He did consider both. He was well aware of the
value of an ample supply of timber to a nation like ours, whose naval
resources can never be too plentiful, and whose magnificent works of art
create a perpetual demand for the treasures of the forest. He was
mindful, also, of the vast increase to the value of his estates which he
might provide by planting his inferior lands; but, with all this, he
hoped, as it was fair he should, that his own revenues would be improved
by the same means, perhaps before he had passed the middle of life. I
was present one day when he was pointing out to my father the difference
in his mode of planting two portions of land, and the comparative profit
he expected to receive in a few years.
“These fifty acres, you observe,” said he, “are not for pasturage,
though you see two larches to one oak. Half the larches are to remain
for timber trees; the other half are nurses, and will be thinned out in
five or six years.”
“O dear!” interrupted I, “before they are large enough to be of any
use.”
“I expect they will pay me,” he continued, “for the outlay on all these
fifty acres. They would be worth little if we lived far away from any
population but that of our own estates; but there is demand enough for
bark, for poles, &c., to take off all I shall have to dispose of. The
bark will sell for about half as much as oak bark; I suppose it will
fetch from four to five pounds a ton. The quality of the wood is so
good, that stakes and poles of it are in great request for gates and
palings. The smaller sticks I may want myself; or if not, Mr. Malton or
other farmers will be glad of them for supports for their sheep nets,
when the flocks are eating turnips off the ground. They sell at about a
shilling a dozen.”
“You will pay yourself in six years at farthest,” said my father. “Do
you expect to make more or less of those other fifty acres where you
plant larch only?”
“More in the long run, but nothing for ten years or upwards. I have not
planted so close there, you see; so that there will be no thinning at
the end of five years. The original expense of planting is less, of
course;—about twenty shillings an acre, at the most. Then we must
remember the rent of the soil, which is perhaps a shilling an acre.”
“Then to this thirty shillings an acre,” observed my father, “you must
add the ten years’ interest, and the outlay on inclosing; there are no
other expenses, I think?”
“Not any. There are twelve hundred larches on each acre. I shall remove
one-third in ten years; and it will be strange if the bark and timber of
four hundred do not pay all the expenses we have mentioned, with
compound interest. Then I shall have eight hundred trees on every acre,
the very lowest value of which will be ten pounds; and the ground will
be worth four times what it is at present. It will be pasturage worth
letting by that time.”
“Then,” said my father, “after having paid yourself, these fifty acres,
which were a month ago worth a rental of only fifty shillings, will
bring in ten or twelve pounds a year, and have five hundred pounds’
worth of larches upon them. Upon my word, this is a pretty profit!”
“Consider, too,” said Sir Henry, “that without costing me a farthing
more, the thinnings of the plantation will add to my income at a
continually increasing rate. I shall be able to employ more and more
labourers every year:—not that I need tell you so; but I put in this
observation for your daughter’s sake. She looks quite disappointed in
me—disappointed to find that I look for any profit from the measures
which will benefit my family and society at large. Have I guessed your
thoughts rightly, Miss Lucy?”
So rightly, that I blushed and my father laughed, while he assured Sir
Henry that we none of us doubted his disinterestedness.
“What different ways there are of benefiting one’s country and
posterity, in different parts of the world!” I exclaimed. “In Canada, a
landed proprietor would clear away as many trees as possible, I suppose,
if he wished to do a patriotic thing.”
“It is one of the most interesting employments I know of,” said my
father, “to trace how the same principles lead men to directly opposite
or widely different modes of conduct, according to circumstances; and if
men studied this fact a little more carefully than they do, the world
would be incalculably happier than it seems likely to be for some time
to come. If statesmen and legislators saw that usages and laws must be
varied with lapse of time and change of circumstances, we should be
freed from many useless institutions. If our men of power saw that what
is beneficial to a country in one age may be hurtful in another, we
should have a better economy and a wiser distribution of our wealth. If
our people discerned the same thing, they would leave off complaining of
new measures because they are not old, and railing against their best
friends because the advice they offer would not have suited the
condition of our grandfathers.”
Sir Henry observed that he had heard far more said about what would have
been thought of Mr. Malton’s large farm a century ago, than what ought
to be thought of it now. In the same manner, the wise men who study how
the resources of the nation may be best managed and improved are called
hard-hearted, because the measures they recommend are different from
such as were necessary when our population was less numerous, when there
was less competition in commerce, and a smaller demand for agricultural
produce.
“There can be no surer mark of ignorance and prejudice,” observed my
father. “The king of Persia is prejudiced when he laughs at a king of
England for having only one wife; and every Englishman who thinks the
king of Persia wicked for having twenty, is ignorant. He does not know
that the religion of the monarch allows the custom. Any one of our
labourers would be prejudiced if he blamed an Indian for waste for
burning a whole pine-tree at once; and that Indian would show himself
ignorant if he laughed at Sir Henry for spending so much time, and
labour, and money, in planting trees, of which the Indians have more
than they know what to do with.”
“Any one such instance,” observed Sir Henry, “is enough to silence for
ever all objections to plans because they are new. I would desire no
better instance of the variations introduced by time into the way of
employing labour and capital than the one you have reminded me of, by
your mention of Indian forests. There was a time when this island was as
much overgrown with wood as any part of North America now is.”
“What a different place it must have been then!” said I.
“Different indeed! Vast forests extending over whole districts; the
climate as cold as now in the north of Russia; (for countries in our
latitude become temperate only in proportion as they are cleared;)
wolves abounding in every wilderness, and swamps spreading in all
directions, to the great injury of the health of the savage
inhabitants,—such was Great Britain once.”
“Have swamps any necessary connexion with woods?” I inquired.
“With untended forests, where no care is taken to prevent them. A tree
is blown down across a rivulet, and forms a dam. The water, stopped in
its course, diffuses itself over the neighbouring ground, and loosens
the roots of other trees, and, by becoming stagnant, poisons their
vegetation. These other trees fall, one by one, and form other dams; and
thus the destruction proceeds, till what was once a forest becomes a
bog.”
“This is the reason, then, why trees are found buried in swamps?”
“Certainly; and we know it not only from the fact of trees being so
found, but from there being actual instances of such transformations of
a forest into a swamp at the present time, in Invernesshire, and some
other parts of Scotland. Now, what would a wise landed proprietor do in
such a state of the country as this?”
“The very reverse of what you are now doing,” said my father. “He would
clear as much ground as possible for cultivation, putting the wood out
of the way as fast as it was cut. He would build with it, burn it, and
encourage every body about him to use it for all the purposes of life to
which it could be applied. He would encourage pasturage, because cattle
are scarce in proportion to the scarcity of open ground. These cattle,
continually increasing under the care of man, would wander into the
woods, and, though they could not injure large timber trees, would
prevent the young plants from coming up, and thus prepare for the
decline of the forests.”
“If things proceeded in their natural course, the face of the country
would be wholly changed in a few centuries,—the hills being bleak and
barren, and the vales swampy; the latter having become unfit for the
residence of man, and the former an unsheltered and perilous pasture for
his flocks. What would a wise landed proprietor do now?”
“He would hang woods on the summits of the hills to protect the herds
grazing on their slopes,” replied my father. “He would cut trenches in
the valley, and, as an effectual drain, would plant the hollows the
first moment that their soil would bear the process. Under this
management, the high grounds would become fertile, and the bogs would be
converted into firm, rich, vegetable soil, ready to repay the labours of
the plough.”
“Then if you owned the downs of our southern counties,” said I, “or the
bogs of Ireland, you would plant and drain and plant again?”
“I should, and as much for my own profit as for the general good; for
the price of timber rises, of course, in proportion to its scarcity. Now
you see how different is the application of labour and capital in these
two states of a country. In the one, labour is applied to banish, in the
other to create, woods. In the one, cattle are permitted to destroy the
young timber; while in the other every tender shoot is protected at an
expense of trouble and money. In the one, growing wood is as little
valuable a part of the proprietor’s capital as the stones which encumber
Mr. Malton’s new fields, and of which he can only make the meanest of
his fences; while in the other, it is the resource on which the
proprietor mainly relies for the stability of his fortune, not only for
the income it brings, but for its power of increasing the productiveness
of his pasture and corn lands.”
“And do you believe,” said I, “that there are any so stupid as to oppose
a different application of labour and capital in these two cases?”
“Not in so clear an instance,” replied my father; “but they will not
follow the precedent in cases very like it. Can you fancy a family of
natives, living, some centuries ago, in a wattled hut in a wilderness of
Cumberland, visited every winter’s night by wolves, every spring season
with agues, crying out in dismay at the proceedings of a rich neighbour
to clear the ground? They would exclaim against having their old customs
broken in upon, and would talk of the pleasure of gathering acorns for
supper in the glades at sunset, and of their hunts, and of the freedom
of their wild life. If their neighbour represented to them that acorns
had long been becoming scarce from the disappearance of oaks in the
swamps; that their children had been swept from their side by diseases
belonging to the locality; and that wild beasts were increasing so fast,
that there seemed a probability of the hunters soon becoming the hunted,
these new notions would only increase their discontent. If he offered to
supply them with certain quantities of grain and meat in exchange for
wolves’ heads, they would complain of the degradation of obtaining their
food by rendering service instead of the dignified independence of
picking up acorns or digging roots out of the soil. They would complain
that he had injured them by fencing in ground where the boar used to
stand at bay; and if he attempted to shew them the impossibility of
restoring the forest and the climate and mode of life to what they were
a hundred years before, and the necessity of making some provision for
their altered state, they would, instead of listening, tax him with all
the distresses and inconveniences which had been prepared before he was
born.—Now, Lucy, can you find a parallel case to this?”
“Very easily,” replied I, “Mr. Malton is the rich neighbour, and old
Williams was one of the lovers of the old paths; and if you had told us
of one who retired back farther into the swamp and built his hut on the
sinking trunks of the fallen trees, I should have thought you were
prophesying of Norton.”
“Let us bode him no ill,” said my father, “but rather hope that he will
plant his foot on firm ground, whatever we may think of the position he
has chosen.”
“I can scarcely imagine,” said I, “that any would be found to object to
the second process Sir Henry described. The shepherd, striving in vain
to win his way against the snow storm on the uplands, in search of his
perishing flock, would surely bless the hand that planted woods to
shelter his charge?”
“Even he,” said my father, “would pluck up every sapling if he dared,
for shepherds are well known to grudge every foot of soil on which their
flock cannot browze.”
“Observe the fact,” said Sir Henry. “Are not my pheasants lampooned
before they are hatched? Is not every larch in all these acres looked
upon as a meal taken from a half-starved cow? When the shepherd finds
his flock safe under the shelter of a full-grown wood, he will be
reconciled to the planter; and not till then: and if any one of my
neighbours should live to rest his aged form on his staff in the noonday
sun, and watch his grandchildren, among a hundred labourers, felling
wood on this spot, he may look on my grave as he creeps homewards, and
sigh to think how he once misunderstood my intentions; but I must not
expect this justice in my lifetime.”
“You may,” replied my father; “and if you are spared to a good old age,
you will witness as total a change in the views of our discontented
neighbours as in the aspect of this waste or the condition of our
village.”
Sir Henry pointed to the temporary dwellings which had been erected for
the troop of labourers who had come from a distance to work under his
forester, (there not being an adequate supply of labour at Brooke for
the new demand,) and said,—
“When that row of sheds shall have grown into a village, and when the
axe and mattock shall be heard in the woods throughout the winter’s day;
when the timber-wain shall come jingling down the slope, and the sawyers
and woodmen be seen going and returning early and late, my purposes will
be answered, whether I live to see their fulfilment or not.”
----------------------------